JPL-related Twitter feeds, website to cease with shutdown

LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE>> Even though about 5,000 employees at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will report to work as usual, no information will be going out during the federal government shutdown.

In line with NASA headquarters shutting down on Monday, JPL has put a hiatus to news releases, website and social media updates.

“Information going out through the Twitter feeds and website, we coordinate with the program manager at NASA,” said JPL spokeswoman Veronica McGregor. “Without that coordination, we’re not releasing mission information during the shutdown.”

However, since JPL is privately run by Caltech and under contract to NASA, it is spared from being shut down with the rest of the space exploration organization. But the JPL Twitter feeds that are manned by NASA headquarters are already silent.

“In the event of government shutdown, we will not be posting or responding from this account. We sincerely hope to resume tweets soon,” tweeted the Asteroid Watch account, JPL’s Near Earth Object Office that coordinates NASA’s efforts to detect potentially hazardous asteroids or comets that could impact Earth.

NASA “will shut down almost entirely,” President Barack Obama said on Monday, but Mission Control will remain open to support the two NASA astronauts living on the International Space Station.

“Due to the gov’t [sic] shutdown, all public NASA activities/events are canceled or postponed until further notice. Sorry for the inconvenience,” the official NASA Twitter posted Tuesday morning.

The usually busy NASA website is currently a white page notifying visitors that the website is unavailable.